The world’s best architects, planners and urbanists are being invited to take part in an international design competition to imagine a vision for the future of the Kingsford and Kensington Town Centres in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Randwick City Council is putting up $300,000 in prize money as part of the K2K Urban Design Competition and is encouraging applicants to think creatively to generate ideas for the town centres to be sustainable and innovative.

The community will also be involved in the project and will help develop the brief for the competition as well as providing feedback on the entries to assist the independent expert jury consisting of Malcolm Snow, Ben Hewett, Jennifer Neales, Kerry Clare and Tim Greer.

"The town centres of Kingsford and Kensington run along Anzac Parade and are an important transport corridor. The townships have changed considerably over the years and are going through another period of change now with the construction of light rail.Randwick Mayor Noel D’Souza said K2K is a big-thinking project with a strong community partnership.

“They both have developed distinctive characters with Kingsford emerging as one of Sydney’s undiscovered eat streets strongly influenced by the close proximity of UNSW and NIDA.

“While the town centres have many strong qualities, I think people recognise there is room for improvement and increased vitality. We owe it to the thousands of people who live, work and shop here every day to make the town centres strong, attractive and exciting places for people.

“While change is inevitable, what we can control is how it works for Council and the community. The K2K Urban Design Competition will be the catalyst to develop new planning controls for the town centres to ensure they are unique places full of life, learning and people,” Mayor D’Souza said.

The K2K Urban Design Competition is also a direct response to manage a number of unsolicited planning proposals received from developers.

“In the past 18 months Council has received five unsolicited planning proposals from developers seeking to build residential towers of up to 26-storeys (approximately 85m) which is well in excess of Council’s planning controls. This is clearly inappropriate and Council and the State Government’s Joint Regional Planning Panel has refused the proposals.

“Last year I met with the Minister for Planning to discuss a process for dealing with these types of proposals to ensure a consistency of approach. I welcome the Minister’s support for this competition which will develop a coordinated and strategic approach to this important corridor.

“Now is the time to develop strong planning controls so that Council and the community can determine the future we want rather than leaving it to adhoc planning proposals,” Mayor D’Souza said.

Throughout July 2016 Randwick City Council will be conducting a series of community consultation activities including online surveys, forums and urban pinboards as well as face-to-face consultation with local businesses, residents and shoppers. This consultation process will help develop a brief that up to four short-listed competitors will respond to as part of the competition.

Architects, urbanists and planners interested in being part of the competition should fill out an online Expression of Interest registration form by 13 July 2016. The successful competitors will be announced on 29 July 2016 and their entries publicly exhibited in September and October 2016.

Further details about the community consultation and K2K Urban Design Competition can be found on the dedicated competition website www.k2k.sydney.

Competition enquiries:

Andrew Mackenzie – Competition Advisor 0403774304 or k2k@citylab.com.au.